History through the Operaglass

When I found this book, about 4 years ago, I was thrilled that one of my favorite subjects had been addressed and compiled at such length. Opera tends to tap the most dramatic of stories, so there are plenty of fictional or mythological plots, but many librettists have seen dramatic potential in real stories. That is not to say that "historically based" operas are always accurate: sometimes they can have more legend in them than those based in myth.George Jellinek guides the reader through approximately 1800 years of opera plots, from Giulio Cesare to Tosca and many others in between. Google Books also has a preview and e-book available.

Perhaps someday this book will be updated to the modern era.

Best Links

Over the past 6 years, I have collected an extensive list of useful sites related to music and academia. Here are some of my favorites, by category.

Free Sheet Music

Imslp.org The sine qua non of all free classical music, IMSLP now has a “search by melody” linked section and categories by genre, era, and instrumentation. Various legal challenges have been brought in the past against IMSLP’s public-domain collection, but the site is still going, and stronger and more useful than ever.

http://www.music-scores.com/useful collection featuring Sibelius Scorch playback and score previews, with music for all skill levels drawing on the classical canon, unusual pieces, and new compositions. Some scores require a subscription to print, but the playback section is always free.

https://urresearch.rochester.edu/viewInstitutionalCollection.action;jsessionid=BC940326E443F1ABB943E6C46A04863B?collectionId=25 The Sibley library at U Rochester has a great database of scanned music (i.e. no Creative Commons work) and is especially useful for piano repertoire and turn-of-the-century works. Much of their collection is now duplicated to IMSLP, but the number of unique holdings at Rochester are still worth searching if IMSLP doesn’t turn up enough for you.

http://www.mutopiaproject.org/browse.html#byComposer All typeset using Lilypad, Mutopia’s various works are fewer and more mainstream than the others mentioned here, but the editions are cleaner and nice to play from. Sometimes an odd gem will appear, so I check the new listings every so often.

CPDL.org Good choral music site, wiki-based for ease of use. Most of the collection is cross referenced along with IMSLP at Wikipedia, so if you look at a composer bio linked from IMSLP, you might find a different set of results at CPDL.

http://icking-music-archive.org/index.php The Werner Icking music collection is also linked frequently at Wiki, and generally is good for Baroque or organ repertoire.

Honorable mentions: 

The Smithsonian collection and the National Library of Australia both feature limited full-color scans of 20th century editions, generally popular prints but also some lesser known music. These sites are good as reference, but not for printing or downloading.

Recordings

Classiccat.net is great for downloading free classical music recordings. This site does not host any recordings, but archives them from around the web categorized by composer. The quality can be hit and miss, and the same for the coverage overall for each composer, but I've found some gems here as the sites referenced often contain large, quality collections and other links.

Naxos Music Library has an extensive listing of labels and records both famous and truly obscure, all worth sifting through and updated frequently.

Classical Music Library and Classical Scores Library are two halves of an excellent archive which fills in important gaps in Naxos and IMSLP's collections. The recordings at CML are not as many as Naxos but I have often found recordings there of artists not listed with Naxos, or historical records from an era not yet available to stream at NML. The scores database in some cases extends past 1923, so the scores are not always public domain; the downside is that you cannot download them (though printing is allowed and if you have a "print to" option such as PrimoPDF you may be able to download a copy in that manner).

Academic Research

These are the databases which my school subscribes to, but some of their functionalities are available for general use.

EBSCO I generally use this database to collect the first few articles on my topic, because EBSCO covers a wide range of topics and levels of focus (i.e. scholarly articles, opera reviews, newspaper editorials).

JSTOR‘s collection overlaps with EBSCO but contains many unique periodicals and subject coverage. Large full-text collection available.

Project MUSE Another full-text database, MUSE is for the arts and offers citations and downloads for their collection.

Grove Music This database covers the serious, in-depth articles of Grove and the quick-reference entries of the Harvard and Oxford Dictionaries and the Oxford Companion to Music. Also available at this site is Richard Taruskin’s Oxford History of Western Music, which is good for a long read or a reference for what you know and should know on the subject.

The Lost Operas of Palais Garnier

It all started for me with Phantom of the Opera.  I have always loved Broadway shows (and operetta, starting in 2003) and after listening to the original cast soundtrack and reading Phantom 3 times in a row cover to cover, decided to try listening to a real opera. The first operas available to me were Lucia di Lammermoor,  Don Giovanni,and Dido and Aeneas.  But as soon as I could get to a Borders bookstore, I bought myself a copy of Faust,  because this opera is central to the plot of Phantom.  Christine sings the role of Marguerite, Faust's virginal victim, in this most famous of Gounod's operas (or entire works). Faust was the most popular and first opera at the Metropolitan Opera House when it opened in 1883, and continues to be performed today because of its dramatic story and archetypal characters. But there were other operas mentioned in Leroux' novel: La Juive,  by Halevy; Le Prophete, by Meyerbeer; and more. These operas, blockbusters in their day, survive today on excerpts albums or curiosity revivals. If Meyerbeer is thus represented, what of the countless other operas  which premiered in this era of luxury and grand 5 act dramas only to be forgotten by the newer trends? 

This question has intrigued me since I first listened to Faust,  in 2006. Some time I would like to find a list of performances in the 1870s-1900s at the Paris Opera, and research the scores and composers who have become obscure. There may be better reasons for their disappearance than changing tastes, but the librarian in me would love to properly archive them in order to facilitate research and possible revivals. 

Here is an aria which made it out of obscurity into recent renown when Placido Domingo performed it at the original Three Tenors concert, 1990.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TscVCfHAJvc  O Paradis, from Meyerbeer's L'Africaine sung by 20th c. tenor Jussi Bjorling

Atonal Counterpoint from Norway: Fartein Valen

Valen (1887-1952) lived his entire life a bachelor in the country of Norway, but made important strides in the field of 20^th century music despite his relative isolation. His particular atonal “dissonant counterpoint” was developed in all likelihood completely unaware of Schoenberg’s work, though based on the same recognition of the need for a solid ground when leaving tonality behind. Valen was fond of the polyphony of Bach and worked out contrapuntal solutions which, while not tonal or based on consonant intervals, are as intricate and complex a system as that of the old masters. Interestingly, Valen studied composition with Max Bruch about ten years after the latter had mentored Ernst Mielck (see Friday’s post).

Much of Valen’s work is available at IMSLP, which is where I first encountered this fascinating composer. Recordings are available through Naxos for most of his work including the pieces written after 1923 which are not yet in the public domain. In addition, here is a taste of Valen’s unique style, from YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7kPHBiB0Lc Nachtstuck, from a set of 4 piano pieces

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q2rBzyPzhM Glenn Gould plays the 2^nd piano sonata (part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hrz-vSBpVw&feature=related (part 2)

Sources: Grove, Naxos, links from Wikipedia

Tchaikovsky, Boris

Yes, that’s right, not Piotr Ilich, but Boris Alexandrovich Tchaikovsky (1925-1996). A composer of the modern age, his career took place 100 years after his more famous countryman. This Tchaikovsky is represented by orchestral works, film scores, chamber music, and an opera. His miniatures for piano are playful, sometimes modal, and ultimately charming.  If you can, check them out on Naxos, or his "After the Ball" suite, also on Naxos - lovely old-fashioned orchestral dance music.  Developing his style from the Russian masters of the previous generation and mixing in contemporary influences, Tchaikovsky was famous in his country but not well known outside of the Iron Curtain. Nowadays, he is fairly well represented on record, with several dozen recordings at the Naxos Music Library. 

Here is a recording of one of his settings of Pushkin’s poetry:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK_NOYNSRJU

the String Quartet, no.6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zoh9cBkEL8

and the Sinfonietta for Strings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3YNaxTW5l4


Sources - Grove, Naxos, additional links available from Wikipedia

Alfredo Casella

Casella (1883-1947) is another one of my cherished finds from IMSLP.  His use of modes and colorful pianistic style make him a unique find from the era immediately surrounding 1923 - the beginning-date of copyright, the end-date of free public domain music.  Casella was also a theorist and talented orchestrator, and I own a copy of his treatise on orchestration. His piano works vary from miniatures "for children" to vignettes in the style of various contemporaries or predecessors- Brahms, Debussy, Wagner, Strauss. The  children's pieces are a joy and cover various levels of technical skill, all in Casella's unique style and mixing in various influences and modes. The vignettes demonstrate the composer's sense of reverent and not-so reverent humor towards his fellows - in each piece, both the title and the use of the piano are pitch-perfect to the composer they evoke.  His orchestral music represents different periods of his career, from the early influence of Impressionism (A Notte Alta is a good example), to the "second generation" (Puccini being the first) of lush pieces like Resphighi's Pines of Rome, to angular, chromatic works of the later years. 

Here is a recording from YouTube of the first 6 of the Children's pieces: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4-qsdEjeaY 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq5il4xkPmw  virtuoso etudes 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuA8QOXpCFA&playnext=1&list=PLAEB1B84D21D745DD  A Notte Alta part 1 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXG8A8NPp5g&feature=related  part 2

The Short but Promising Life of Ernst Mielck

Ernst Mielck was a Finnish pianist and composer whose life was entirely spent in the last third of the 19th century. He died of tuberculosis two days before his 22nd birthday, leaving a small oeuvre of approximately 30 works. The Finnish critic Flodin, a contemporary of Sibelius, called him "the Finnish Schubert." During his brief career Mielck wrote songs for four part choir, orchestra pieces, chamber music, and works featuring his own instrument, the piano. As with the premature death of Mozart, we will never know what the mature Mielck would have produced; at the time of his death, his compositions had just won international notice, and even favorable comparison with Sibelius, considered a rival by critics. It is interesting to note that Mielck did not begin playing or composing music until he was 10, making his career and development by the time of his death even more remarkable. 

The few recordings I can locate are available through Naxos Music Library: the String Quartet, op.1; the Fairy Tale Symphony, op.4; the Konzertstuck for Violin, op.8, and two songs for baritone on poems by Fontane, without opus. Scores for one of the songs, Heimat, and the String Quartet are available through IMSLP, as well as 3 works for piano and 4 songs for choir. These pieces, however, have been scanned in color and are consequently difficult to reproduce in a printed copy. I transcribed several of the partsongs and the Sarabande, one of Mielck's last works, in a clean and reproducible copy.  Mielck's music is late-Romantic and as accessible as that of Sibelius, with the piano music idiomatic and brilliant as might be expected from a composer who was first a pianist. What I have seen of his oeuvre tends to be melancholy, but this may not be representative of the (only slightly larger) entire collection. 

Here is a recording of the Symphony from youtube: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wCb3ggMAD8 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R7h1qEUPxc 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DosihHqf61o 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCyi9vkxJc8 

and the Violin Concerto: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9yxF6AATH0&feature=related 


Sources: Grove, Naxos, additional links available from wikipedia

Quarter tones and Beethoven

In free time, I frequently browse IMSLP by “random page” in search of the next obscure find. In this way I came across the composer and theorist Anton Reicha, who perhaps I might have found earlier had I been a woodwind player. He is well known for his woodwind quintets, but was also a prescient and ground-breaking theorist, exploring polymeter, quarter tones, and bitonality in his theoretical treatises – in Beethoven’s time! Reicha and Beethoven were friends and contemporaries, though Reicha lived much longer than Beethoven and never became the same kind of celebrity.

One particular favorite of mine from Reicha’s works is the Overture in D, which is in 5/8 time. Not on Youtube, unfortunately, and out of print commercially in the US. Here instead is a segment from Reicha’s Requiem- the Lacrimosa, at 7:51 – notice the augmented 2^nd!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em0FtFd8QWs

http://www.youtube.com/user/agir3?blend=9&ob=5#p/u/0/sSu7a4oO7xg some fugues from his set of 36 – Reicha re-envisioned the fugue, with the answer entering on any step of the scale

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkN_GrNGdrk&playnext=1&list=PLC288BD9B3985EEDD for Glass Harmonica and Orchestra – a novelty piece then as now (not the best recording)

Sources: Grove, Naxos, and sites from wikipedia